What To Do About ‘Horseplay’ At Work

I recently met up with another Health & Safety consultant for coffee and a chat. We meet up to exchange news, insights, and stories. To my horror, this is one of the stories he told me…

You see, his son is a woodworker. Last year he worked for a company that makes wooden planters, waste bins, tables and chairs, and such. So, it’s a workshop environment. Now having a Health & Safety consultant as a father, his son knows about health and safety. In fact, it’s been drilled into him since he was a little boy! But as tends to happen, complacency kicks in…

One Tuesday morning at the end of last year, my colleague’s phone rings. His son’s name flashes up on the display. He presses the green button.

“Dad, I’ve been suspended from work due to gross misconduct,” were his son’s first words.

“Uhhh, okay. Well, what did you do?” my colleague replied.

“I didn’t do anything,” the son says stroppily. “I don’t know why they’ve suspended me. Somebody’s got something in for me. They’ve got it in for me because they don’t like me…”

(If you have kids you are no doubt familiar with this tale of denial. Unfortunately, my colleague’s son was 25 at the time!)

So, the company suspended the son for two weeks on full pay. He heard nothing for those two weeks until he phoned his Dad again. “I’ve got this letter,” he says on the phone, “maybe you should come around and read it…”

So my colleague goes round and reads the letter. The son has been accused of firing a nail gun at other people, and called in for a meeting.

“But everybody does it!” the son says, defensively. “When we’ve got nothing to do and we’re bored, we fool around,” he admitted. “We wear these Kevlar trousers. We only shoot at people’s legs, and nobody gets hurt! It’s not really a problem.”

At which point my colleague throttles him. “You should know better!” he admonishes.

“Well they don’t like me,” the son replies. “Everyone does it, but they’re making an example of me.”

So the son goes to the meeting and admits he did it. The company owner is at the meeting and claims he’s injured somebody. The company can’t evidence this claim: there is no report in the accident book and nobody comes forward.

“Was there a workshop manager?” I ask my colleague. “If there was, surely they must have been there?”

“Yeah, but apparently the workshop manager just turns a blind eye,” my colleague tells me. “He laughs because he knows this happens.”

So we discuss the circumstances some more. The workshop manager is in his 40s, so should know better. The company owner knows other directors with similar companies where these things also happen. So why don’t they deal with it? Why don’t they put in training courses or information about horseplay?

Because that’s what it is: horseplay. Fooling around. The company sent my colleague’s son home again after the meeting and two weeks later they fired him.

Fortunately, my colleague’s son is very resourceful, so he found another job in the meantime. But it left a bad taste because my colleague feels the company mishandled it.

After all, if you’ve got youngsters fooling around, these things should be dealt with differently. Perhaps he should have been given a warning. I suspect they made an example of him to make everyone else who was fooling around fall in line.

But why did they pick on my colleague’s son? One thing that came out later was that he was the supervisor that day.

So in that regard, you can see why they picked on him. I don’t know what happened to the workshop manager. I know he was disciplined, but my colleague’s son lost his job.

This story is about addressing things you know happen, but have turned a blind eye to out of routine complacency. Over a long enough timeframe, you get what you tolerate. These things will eventually come back to haunt you.

Good Health and Safety is a long-term process that requires commitment at the highest level, but also the bravery to have uncomfortable conversations when the need arises. Only then can you change a working culture in a way that can save lives… or prevent somebody from being shot by a nail gun.

Moira

P.S. For the latest information on SafetyNow training courses, head to https://safety-now.co.uk/

Image credit: Don Hankins